Good news to the poor, freedom for the captives

When Jesus first started teaching and talking to people about the
kingdom of God, he introduced himself like this:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to
proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release
to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free
those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor
(Luke 4:18-19 NET)

That was what he came to do; to bring good news to the poor, to release
prisoners, to give sight to the blind and to free the oppressed. But
then when we read the Gospels, when we read the stories of Jesus, we
find that he didn’t actually release any prisoners. So we say, he didn’t
literally mean “prisoners”, like people in prison. He obviously meant
something different.

Maybe he was freeing people from the captivity of sin. Maybe he was
giving sight to those who were spiritually blind. Maybe he was talking
about the poor in spirit.

Now of course he was talking about all of those things. He came to save
people from their sins. That’s what even his name means. But that was
not all he did, and if you only read the Gospels, you only get half of
the story. The Gospels tell us what Jesus did before he was crucified;
but the Acts tell us what He did afterwards. Let’s have a look at the
next part of our journey through Acts to see what Jesus did next.

(Acts 11:27-12:12)

The disciples are going about in the name of Jesus; “the name of Jesus”
is an expression meaning “the authority of Jesus”. If you have someone’s
name, it’s like you have their hanko.

In fact, it’s better than that. Do you know the series Mito Komon? It’s
a classic Samurai series about a retired lord in the 17th century. He
goes around with a couple of samurai and fixes problems. At the end of
every episode, the samurai have found the bad guys, but they have no
weapons and they are outnumbered. But one of them pulls out a little
case with Mito Komon’s seal on it, and the bad guys realise that they’re
dealing with someone incredibly powerful and they surrender. That’s
pretty much exactly what it’s like to go out in the name of Jesus.

In fact, that’s exactly what it’s like for us today. We go in the name
of Jesus, with the power and the authority of Jesus. And the bad guys
know that we have the authority of Jesus and they know that they are
dealing with someone incredibly powerful and they surrender.

So the book of Acts is the continuing story of Jesus because it’s the
story of what people do in the name of Jesus, with the authority and the
power of Jesus. And what happens?

First we see prophets going around prophesying. Remember that this is a
new thing in Israel at the time. For about four hundred years, there
were no prophets in Israel. Then John came, then Jesus, and suddenly we
have prophets again. But these prophets come with the same message that
prophets have always come with. Prophets come to encourage people to
help the poor and oppressed. It’s what Amos did, and Micah and Isaiah
and Jeremiah, and John, and Jesus himself. Now we see prophets coming in
the name of Jesus, encouraging people to help those who were in need.
You’ll always see in the book of Acts a church that balances meeting
people’s spiritual needs and their material needs.

You see, Antioch was a pretty well-off city. It was one of the three
biggest cities in Asia at the time. It was the main trade hub for the
Roman Empire. The believers there would have been much wealthier than
the ones in Jerusalem. And so even though there was going to be a famine
through the whole empire, the people in Antioch would deal with it
better than those in Jerusalem.

The other weekend we went down to Osaka to go help feed the homeless. So
we were people from a small, poor city going to help those from a richer
place, and sometimes you need to do that. But we went because we knew
that there was a problem and a need there. We knew there’s been a need
there for twenty years or so. The people here in Antioch were responding
to a need that hadn’t happened yet. They were going to a people they
didn’t know, who were different to them, about a problem that didn’t
exist when they responded to it! And despite all that, they still sent money.

Why? Because there’s always a connection between reaching out to the
poor and reaching out in faith. When the prophets called these
Christians in Antioch to act of service to the poor they also called
them to act of faith. Remember that they were going to be affected too.
This was not a famine that would affect Israel or Judea. This was a
famine that was going to affect the whole world. It happened between 45
and 48 AD; for three years there was a famine in the whole of the
empire. Antioch was a big city but even the big cities were affected.
Rome had such a severe grain shortage that the emperor was mobbed in the
streets. The Christians in Antioch were going to be affected; they would
go hungry. But they didn’t say “What about us?” They said “What about
them?” That is a faith response.

This isn’t a prophecy - I don’t think it needs to be - but there is
going to be a big financial crisis throughout the world. A lot of people
will become homeless. And it will affect us as well. And when it does,
we get to choose: do we say “What about us?” or do we say “What about
them?” Will we be concerned about our own interests, or, as Philippians
2:4 says, will we be concerned about the interests of others as well?
Help can only go downwards. We can only help those worse off than
ourselves. So knowing that we will be affected, are we going to be good
news to the poor? That would be an act of faith.

And it’s quite an act of faith for Barnabas and Saul, because they’re
walking into a death trap. They need to get to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem
has gone pretty seriously anti-Christian. Herod kills James and puts
Peter in prison. But he can’t kill him yet, because it’s the Passover.
He’s in prison for three nights, the length of the Passover festival,
and on the final night, what happens? Release of the captives. Another
part of Jesus’s gospel comes to pass. Feeding the hungry, releasing the
captives. Good news to the poor. Perhaps he meant it.

But what strikes me is, why was he in prison for three nights? Why
didn’t God release him straight away? I think the answer is something to
do with faith as well.

We see in verse 5 that while Peter was in prison, the church got
together to pray for him. They knew that he was suffering, they knew he
was in need, so they got together to pray. Again, they were exercising faith.

In this passage we’ve got two types of faith. The first type of faith is
listening to God and reaching out to the needs of others. The second
type is listening to the needs of others and reaching out to God.

That’s what we see here in this passage. A church which is reaching out
in faith, listening to God and looking to the needs of others, and
listening to the needs of others and looking to God. The church going
out in the power of Jesus, with the authority of Jesus, in the name of
Jesus, doing what Jesus said he would do: bringing good news to the
poor, releasing the captives and also proclaiming the year of the Lord’s
favour. And the Spirit of God going with them, to give them the strength
and the ability to do this.

This is what we have as well. We have that same name of Jesus. Like in
Mito Komon, we have the authority that makes the bad guys go away.